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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28825995">A Certain Something</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunney/pseuds/Gunney'>Gunney</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hogan's Heroes (TV 1965)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 12:27:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,668</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28825995</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunney/pseuds/Gunney</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Vignette (Though I may be inspired to turn it into something else.) </p><p>The boys have been captured and tortured. While waiting in their cell, Carter asks a question.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Certain Something</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Sir?” </p><p>“Yeah, Carter?” </p><p>“Why...why do they keep torturing us when they know..they won’t get anything out of us?” Carter’s words came out carefully, seconds before his finger went back into his mouth, feeling the loose teeth along the right side of his lower jaw. One of them came loose and he pulled it free of his mouth, staring at the white chip of bone, smeared with blood. His tongue found the jagged edge of the root of the tooth as Hogan sighed. </p><p>“It’s not about getting anything out of us.” Hogan said, his eyes focused on the tiny glimmer of white in Carter’s crimson stained fingers. His left hand, and Carter’s right hand, were joined via manacles that were connected by a short chain. That chain ran through an iron loop that had been cemented into the floor. Their first day in the cell, the thin mattresses laid on the floor had been little comfort, but now the cold wall behind him, and the bare cushioning beneath him felt like heaven. </p><p>Carter still hadn’t decided what to do with the piece of tooth, but he turned away from the colonel to spit blood toward the drain in the corner of the room. The cell was sprayed down each morning. Eventually the old blood would  be gone. Should he toss the tooth toward the drain too? Accept that the damage was done, and not likely to be repaired? </p><p>Hogan shifted, his focus turning to his left leg. Their capture had been messy and he’d gotten caught in razor wire, then dragged free of it by guards too eager to have their hands on him. The cuts had been cleaned a little too late to avoid infection and his leg from the knee down, wrapped in bloodied bandages, was a constant irritation of heat and pain. The other injuries, bruises, cigarette burns, the missing fingernails...if he sat a certain way, they disappeared, but his leg never quit. His leg was more of a torture than the SS could have ever devised. </p><p>Beyond the offending appendage, on the opposite side of the cell, he met Newkirk’s eyes...eye. The one was swollen shut and the wounds coming dangerously close to the delicate organ were red and puffy. Where Hogan had tangled with razor wire, Newkirk had tangled with a dog. The scars marring his face, he would bear for the rest of his life. If the infection or the Nazi’s or both, didn’t kill him first. “It’s about punishing us, Andrew.” The englander said, the damage to his face slurring his words. </p><p>“Warning the others…” LeBeau added, “This is what happens to anyone defying the master race.” The Frenchman was chained to Newkirk, as Hogan was to Carter. He lay on his left side, his right arm lying uselessly along his rib cage. None of them knew what had been done to the arm. There was no blood, only marks, long black streaks running up and down the flesh of his hand. LeBeau couldn’t move the limb on his own, and endured the painful jolts that the muscles visited upon him from time to time. LeBeau wouldn’t tell them what had happened, and they had tired of asking. </p><p>Their fifth member, Kinchloe, was missing. He had been the first of them to go and came back puking blood, his stomach a mass of bruises. They had fought like maniacs when the goons came for him a second time. Hogan had taken a gun butt to the head, and Carter had suffered the broken tooth along with a swelling jaw. Newkirk still had his free hand tucked behind his back, resting over the throbbing place where the gun barrel had jabbed into his kidney. LeBeau had escaped abuse only because he’d darted away fast enough. </p><p>They hadn’t been chained until they fought for Kinchloe. </p><p>Hogan closed his eyes, desperate for sleep. Carter rattled their chain and Hogan took in the bracing breath that would give him the strength to open his eyes, lift his head. “It’s about showing the German people that their enemies have been punished...justice for our wrong doing. And...if a little something about the underground happens to slip free…” Hogan trailed off. </p><p>Carter finally tossed the tooth.  He looked down at the manacle, and his dislocated thumb and forefinger. They’d forced him to make the “A-ok” sign before breaking the fingers forming the gesture. Part of their unique form of punishment for the enigmatic American. “Well...when do they stop? I mean...when do they get tired of it?” </p><p>Hogan made a soft noise, LeBeau closed his eyes and Newkirk sounded like a wise old nurse maid when he said, “That’s part of the torture, Carter. Lettin’ us believe there will be an end to it all. Letting us sit and be miserable for a while, start to heal, and then right back to it...always promising that if we just spill the beans...it’ll end.” </p><p>“It won’t end.” LeBeau said, his voice hitching as his arm started to vibrate. His face blanched and the others fell quiet, watching him closely as he rode out the spell of fits and tremors, his face bathed in sweat by the end of it. </p><p>“I guess…” Carter began, he looked to Hogan apologetically, then continued, “I guess I never realized this might be part of the danger.” </p><p>“What do you mean?” Hogan asked. </p><p>“I mean...get shot, sure. You know...get blown up by one’a my own bombs or...or get squashed by a guard but...just...endless...this.” Carter said. </p><p>Hogan cracked a smile. His head was resting back against the cool wall of the cell and he wished he could bury himself in it, strip naked and plunge into the icy river not fifty feet from their jail. He closed his eyes again, imagining that wonderful moment of absolute relief. </p><p>He had the feeling Carter was bored more than anything else. To think that the greatest torture of all was having nothing to do...the train of thought lead him away from the present moment and he welcomed the distraction, following it into that imaginary, frozen deep, more than willing to embrace sleep and whatever came with it. </p><p>“Colonel…” </p><p>Newkirk sounded annoyed, warning him of something. Hogan didn’t want to go back, but the time he’d spent with these men betrayed him, and he responded, opening his eyes. </p><p>“Time…” He said, sighing. “Is our worst enemy.” </p><p>“I’d like to have that embroidered on a pillow.” Newkirk said. </p><p>A weak laugh came from LeBeau and then footsteps echoed down the hall. </p><p>Keys clanged, jangling and bouncing on the ring as the guard worked the heavy lock. The door opened and the bare bulb in the hallway cast the shadow of a hydra on the cell floor. Kinch was on his feet somehow, his right arm pulled against his chest. The left side of his jaw clearly bigger than the right. He was pushed lightly from behind and he shuffled forward, barely moving more than an inch with each step, stiff as a mannequin, until he had moved beyond the path of the cell door. </p><p>It swung shut behind him and Kinch stopped moving. His eyes were trained on the empty mattress that had been his for the past week. He watched it, jaw clenched shut, breath jerking in and out of his nose wetly. Hogan saw the tears staining his face, could see the hitching breaths in his rib cage, and for a moment he felt despair burning like magnesium in his stomach. Kinch was breaking. Right before them, he was breaking and Hogan could do nothing about it. </p><p>Then Kinch raised his head. His spine straightened, his shoulders went back a millimeter, and he was moving again. His steps were slower, more deliberate, paced. Intentional. </p><p>He moved until he could put his left boot on the mattress, then pressed down. He shifted, dragged his boot, the mattress sliding with it. Step, drag, step drag. Across the cell, cutting a swath in the damp muck until the mattress butted against the wall next to Newkirk. </p><p>Kinch stopped, swaying a little. He grunted, his jaw so still that Hogan was certain it was broken. With aching slowness, Kinch lowered himself to the mattress. Newkirk reached a hand out to guide him and felt Kinch’s right palm warm against his own, squeezing hard. He got a stiff necked nod from the black man before Kinch leaned shoulders and head back against the wall, stretched his feet out, and closed his eyes. </p><p>Hogan felt his guts untangle. Not beaten. Not yet. He was incomprehensibly proud of his man in that moment and watched the three men opposite him. They each, unconsciously, relaxed with their missing man returned, hurt bad, but still alive. Still kicking. What passed for sleep began to overwhelm each of them and Hogan watched it happen. </p><p>The Nazi’s had alot. They had Papa Bear and his key members. They had an endless supply of torture and torturers. They had time and boundless hate. </p><p>What they didn’t have was whatever existed between the five of them. They didn’t have whatever had given Kinch the power to move his mattress from the corner of the room where it had been kicked in the struggle, to his rightful place among them. They didn’t have what helped LeBeau to ride out painful convulsions, what encouraged Carter to ask questions like he always did, what helped Newkirk to quip while somehow being compassionate, and had Hogan still thinking about a way out of this mess..despite everything stacked against them. </p><p>What ever it was..and there was a word for it in every language, hutzpah, gumption, j’ne ce’qua, guts...it was still alive in each of them. And Hogan told himself he’d have to explain it to Carter. It was this unknown something that the Nazi’s were trying to torture out of them. He also knew, the Nazi’s would never succeed.</p>
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